I dunno if this has been posted before and sorry if it has, but this might interest those of you who were wondering the rough history of FFXI. It took about a year for it to get straightened out, possibly slower than what FFXIV seems to be. In addition, Square-Enix didn't seem to give a crap as much back then, now they're actually listening a good deal to the feedback and acting immediately. Perhaps that's just due to the poor state of the game at the moment, who knows?

FFXI also started out pretty rough and did not have a remote fraction of the content it has now. It also had a refund process for the first bit due to server problems.

I just went two years into the future for a minute because I have the ability to do that and FFXIV was amazing, everybody who quit became very sad with their lives. I'd suggest people use this quiet, contentless time to just level several classes so they're ready for the big stuff when it comes. Or wait and catch up, whatever.

It kills me people think it is relevant comparing a launch of a game so many many years ago to a game released today in today's market place the MMO world and gaming has changed a lot since then. Its actually from any thinking mans perspective indicative to how much fail this release is by any stretch of the imagination they learned absolutely nothing from the sins of the past and the failures of other MMO that have been released since ffxi was released so fing sad. The only good thing is maybe they can fix it before it's to late and making it still free for another month before the next update is a step in the right direction...

I'm not defending FFXIV. I understand the game is in a bad state at the moment and I'm complaining as much as anyone else. Well, maybe not as much as anyone else as I don't really give three out of four *****. What I do understand however is that MMO launches are usually godawful, and this one just happens to be more godawful than usual. The purpose of the update history is to show how awful FFXI was at first and how it gradually became better, and would give people an idea when updates may be available for certain things with this game.

People complain, great. Makes Square-Enix work faster. People expect nothing good is going to come out of the game anytime soon, asinine thinking. The game had a **** poor release, but I feel the release was rushed. The game hasn't even been out for 2 months yet and there are some people who are expecting something to the equivalent of WoW or FFXI with one or two expansions in. I bet 90% of the cynical people haven't even seen an MMO launch before.

I'm confident that the game is going to get better is what matters. I don't care if it's one month from now or a year from now. If no one else plays fine. Fact of the matter is I'll be ready for when that time comes and I have something to work towards inside the game, while everyone else will have to catch up later.

WoW just wow. 1 nothing has changed much from 2002 til now. 2 all NEW mmo start out SMALL.

here is what REALLY happen and what REALLY has change. you guys. you guys went into this mmo as VETERAN mmo gamers. you knew what you wanted to see and made unrealistic expectations. you guys knew from the start in beta the game was having stability issues. I think that is a clear red flag to how the game might be at launch. I bought ffxiv KNOWING the game might be crap at release ALL mmo are. Aion, age of conan, and many others wrre small getting out. And have had different issues to why the poor realease. It is not easy making and running an mmo. It is a 24/7 job. It is not like they load it on a mega server and thats it. They got ppl working around the clock collecting feedback catagorizing it and gaving it to the devs. The devs get piles of these and do their best to work on each one. Then it takes time to find a fix, test the fix, then impliment the fix. That is something that will not change.

I agree with irish on the expectation's that some of us had on the game, but really can you blame us ? this is SE second MMO, and a LOT has changed since 2002! To say otherwise is really stupid, it is not like they havent seen countless MMO's sink because of rocky launches, and like you said in another post the community mentality is different, it is no longer "well lets grind 50k mobs for a level" people now day's expect a certain progress to come with a certain time invested :)

so from 2002 till 2010 what has changed in mmorpg? what changed in gaming? I played 30+ mmorpg from ffxi ps2 launch till now. All of them are launched the same. Content is added the same, and expacks are released the same.

as in lore? If that is the case ffxiv got that. the lands in the world were founded by travelers and slowly built settlments growing a community. then the nation ala Mhigo <sp> flourished. After years a nothern empire attacked the nation. amd ppl fleed sticking to their smaller settlements laying in wait of another possible attack. Many years later your character lands on this place and thats where your adventure begins. :)

I have to say how annoyed I am by the people who say that relying on things from 2002 when it comes to MMOs or anything for that matter is foolish. As someone who works in the game industry, it is incredibly important to focus on the background of things in design and technicalities. The game industry is still technically brand new, it is considered new media, it is growing, it hasn't been around for as near as long as some other industries or forms of entertainment, which span decades, hundreds, or even thousands of years. Where would you be if you didn't know where you came from?

People rely on information dating from way back to figure out how they would move forward. You can't necessarily innovate out of nothing. If you think focusing on data from 2002 is stupid, especially in videogames where it's pretty much critical, I feel sorry for you and those who birthed you.

so from 2002 till 2010 what has changed in mmorpg? what changed in gaming? I played 30+ mmorpg from ffxi ps2 launch till now. All of them are launched the same. Content is added the same, and expacks are released the same.

I'll give you the easiest most outstanding one :) Sub's, from 1998-2002 the only major player was Everquest, and they had around 1mil sub's, till FFXI came out wish i belived had at one point around 3.5mil, then Wow happened, and now the MMO industry has up to 12mil+ customers(granted most in one product.) You would think that SE as competition would research why this is so ? why 12mil in one brand ? what is our brand lacking that cant get half or a quarter of their sub's ? what do we not have in our game that they do ? Cant be graphics, cant be quality content, then what is it ?

Wow has everything, you can grind, you can level up doing pvp, you can do quest, you can raid, you can as far as go and log a few hours out of a week and still earn something, granted you will not be as well equiped as the people doing hard modes, or even farming regular raids, but you dont need to have no life in orther to progress.

Long gone are the day's where you needed to have 70 people in one place to do something as simple as beating a boss, sure it was exiting back in the day, but if you look at it, it was stupid, bosses back in the day, where a big HP dmg sponge, that required 30 dps, 15 healers, and 10 tank's, and most of the time you dint know who had the boss, and people where dying left and right, it was just a big zerg fest, to try and get the kill first before somebody else did. That was it :)

Wow has everything, you can grind, you can level up doing pvp, you can do quest, you can raid, you can as far as go and log a few hours out of a week and still earn something, granted you will not be as well equiped as the people doing hard modes, or even farming regular raids, but you dont need to have no life in orther to progress.

You don't play wow or you would realize how much BS that last statement is.

LF 2 DPS 10 ICC 8+/12 5700 GS & Achv req

Edited, Nov 19th 2010 12:58am by Telaki

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Sever: DiabolosBahamut Lakshmi

Angryempath wrote:

Well, if you like having your center of mass above your neck, play Taru. Don't blame me when the wind picks up and you flip over >_>

Rog wrote:

I hate you @#%^ing retards that don't understand that the game pre75 and the game post 75 are two completely @#%^ing different games.

I get why everyone compares FFXIV to current MMO's, but people must understand that these MMOs had a long time to develop. Years of it in fact. Long enough to add the content and scenarios that everyone now finds appealing. That's the biggest problem with half of these comparisons, and yet people often reply that it's unfair to compare MMO's at their launch. So what exactly are we supposed to compare it with?

WoW at launch was basically a grindfest. Sure there were quests, but most of them identical to the guildleves we have (go forth and kill trolls for example). In many respects that hasn't changed. A lot of players argue that the real game doesn't even begin until you hit level 60!

FFXI had little to no content, a thousand bugs and yet went on to become my all time favourite MMO. It had its quirky moments (LFP on SMN for 4 hours), but overall it was an undeniably good quality game.

Still there are current MMOs which have had update after update and still don't offer anything like what FFXIV did at launch. Granted the majority of these are free to play, but the fact remains that while there are few games to compare it with, we must look at the MMO market in general.

I can't speak of the future. Guild Wars 2 might blow all of this out of the water and become the next big thing, or they might release WoW 2 or something. But for the current generation, I think people are counting Square-Enix out of the runnings way too early.

Wow has everything, you can grind, you can level up doing pvp, you can do quest, you can raid, you can as far as go and log a few hours out of a week and still earn something, granted you will not be as well equiped as the people doing hard modes, or even farming regular raids, but you dont need to have no life in orther to progress.

You don't play wow or you would realize how much BS that last statement is.

LF 2 DPS 10 ICC 8+/12 5700 GS & Achv req

Edited, Nov 19th 2010 12:58am by Telaki

I have a rogue(assasination spec) with 5942 GS, what you are talking about are called pugs, and yeah they do go overboard with the requirement's but then again, nobody wants to take a guy with 4.5GS doing 3k dps to ICC

I get why everyone compares FFXIV to current MMO's, but people must understand that these MMOs had a long time to develop. Years of it in fact. Long enough to add the content and scenarios that everyone now finds appealing. That's the biggest problem with half of these comparisons, and yet people often reply that it's unfair to compare MMO's at their launch. So what exactly are we supposed to compare it with?

WoW at launch was basically a grindfest. Sure there were quests, but most of them identical to the guildleves we have (go forth and kill trolls for example). In many respects that hasn't changed. A lot of players argue that the real game doesn't even begin until you hit level 60!

FFXI had little to no content, a thousand bugs and yet went on to become my all time favourite MMO. It had its quirky moments (LFP on SMN for 4 hours), but overall it was an undeniably good quality game.

Still there are current MMOs which have had update after update and still don't offer anything like what FFXIV did at launch. Granted the majority of these are free to play, but the fact remains that while there are few games to compare it with, we must look at the MMO market in general.

I can't speak of the future. Guild Wars 2 might blow all of this out of the water and become the next big thing, or they might release WoW 2 or something. But for the current generation, I think people are counting Square-Enix out of the runnings way too early.

For what i seen, GW2 will blow every game out of the water by miles, as far as comparing games, compare them at release, and what did FFXIV offered at release ? a pretty looking MMO? cus other than that i havent seen anything innovative out of FFXIV

actually... if you count MUD, f2p, p2p mmo. There is about the same amount from 2002 til now. Mud are games from like 1995 ish and some are still running today. There is alot of them. MuD are basically the first gen mmo. I like MUD alot. They are updated live everyday. Like this one i was playing i was lvling a few days. I log on one day walking around town and all of a sudded this tentical monster started to attack everyone. All the low levels were getting killed off and our guild leaders told us to run and hide in the guild halls till they was able to track and defeat it. It was like out of a tv show. Something I wish mmorpg did. there are also many free to play mmo that were around since eq. or a year before ffxi that are still around.

Mabinogi as most of those minus graphics. Its gear based meaning your "class" is defined by your gear. Change gear you change class and all stats can be use as well as skills. You can also mainly craft in the game just focus on those skills. Oh and mabinogi is free to play, got story mission based on levels, i forget if it had manual attack or not. I think it had the option.

Oh and mabinogi is free to play, got story mission based on levels, i forget if it had manual attack or not. I think it had the option.

Unfortunately, Mabinogi like so many other games of its kind, suffers from the "pay to win" philosophy. It's true, you can play without paying a dime, but many items are only available by forking over money and many character enhancements are ultimately made with your purse, not with your in-game ability.

Games like this are commonplace these days. They run a free-to-play game, but more than make up for it by charging large amounts for simple items in item stores. A good example of this is Perfect World, where even a simple upgrade to add an extra slot to a weapon can cost up to $120. It's not hard to see where they're making their money.

The aforementioned game is one I used to play before I moved to FFXIV, since I left FFXI nearly 2 years ago. There's often a hugely competitive community where the level of your success and popularity is on level with the amount of money you pour into the game.

The closest thing to a true 'free to play' game is Guild Wars where you only pay once for the game, because even if you have money to throw at it, it won't make your character any stronger than it is.

MMORPG stands for Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game. To say 'it is an online RPG' means to say it is an MMO. If anything misses the definition of an MMO, it would be games like World of Warcraft and, yes, Final Fantasy XIV in that you can't truly role play as you can in traditional role playing games.

I suppose games like FFXIV more closely resemble massively multiplayer questing games, but MMQG probably won't sit as well with the gaming community.

MMORPG stands for Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game. To say 'it is an online RPG' means to say it is an MMO. If anything misses the definition of an MMO, it would be games like World of Warcraft and, yes, Final Fantasy XIV in that you can't truly role play as you can in traditional role playing games.

That's not correct. There is nothing "massive" about these games. You play in a hub and go into instances alone or with few friends to tackle co-op content. You don't play with everyone else in a huge world. Gameplay is emphasized over Communities.

The difference is clear. They are not the same.

I can say that Diablo is an online RPG, as it is. It doesn't even come close to being an MMO however.

I can say the same about Phantasy Star Online. Or Guild Wars. These games are not MMORPG's.

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SE:

Quote:

We really want to compete against World of Warcraft and for example the new Star Wars MMO.

Massively multiplayer doesn't necessarily mean playing with everyone at once. The hub is a central area where many players can be at any given time, this is true for Guild Wars as well (towns are 'hubs' while any combat area is instanced for your team) yet people still consider it an MMO simply because you can have a large number of people in any of these hubs.

I agree with you to an extent. Technically they're not truly massively multiplayer unless the main part of the game (ie, combat) is in these multiplayer areas. Still, I'll leave the picking apart of technicalities to the people who review these games for a living. If the majority of people call it an MMO, I'll go with that.

Right, the class system is pretty innovative, you have a point. So there's 2 things innovative about FFXIV. However it's kind of offset by all the massive leaps BACKWARD they did in just about every other aspect of the game.

food fpor though about mabinogi, you don;t have to buy anything, only think i bought was a pet and mount. the game got weapons you can upgrade. And mabinogi is an mmorpg. there is no hub. Only things instanced are dungeons. But thats not the only lvling source. you can group up with players form guilds and make guild halls. You can level off of field mobs, explore, or just craft. mounts are not even needed. Nor are pets. Mabinogi is very similar to ffxi to be very honest. Do look up a game before assuming you know it.

I have to say how annoyed I am by the people who say that relying on things from 2002 when it comes to MMOs or anything for that matter is foolish. As someone who works in the game industry, it is incredibly important to focus on the background of things in design and technicalities. The game industry is still technically brand new, it is considered new media, it is growing, it hasn't been around for as near as long as some other industries or forms of entertainment, which span decades, hundreds, or even thousands of years. Where would you be if you didn't know where you came from?

People rely on information dating from way back to figure out how they would move forward. You can't necessarily innovate out of nothing. If you think focusing on data from 2002 is stupid, especially in videogames where it's pretty much critical, I feel sorry for you and those who birthed you.

The data from 2002 should be taken into consideration. But it should not be baselines for an evolving industry. It should be "look how far we've come" and not "well its about the same as back then".

Lessons should be learned, gameplay grown, steps taken forward. This launch did many things right that other games did not traditionally (bugs, server congestion, gameplay balance) but it has also fallen short on many things which have evolved to be norms over the brief history of mmo's.

So yeah, your statement is right. But it should not be limited to forum trolls.

For what i seen, GW2 will blow every game out of the water by miles, as far as comparing games, compare them at release, and what did FFXIV offered at release ? a pretty looking MMO? cus other than that i havent seen anything innovative out of FFXIV

For sure. Then again from what IO saw of FFXIV prior to launch it looked like we were going to get a great game with an amazing storyline and a ****** combat system. Didn't quite turn out that way. Developers are very well trained at delivering content that is frail on its own but awesome when spliced together in 3 second intervals with the rest of the game.

My point is GW2 might be the next best thing but don't get your hopes up to high. You saw what happens to those who got their hopes up for FFXIV.